Creepy - Basement Venus & Keep Calm and Smile

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Basement Venus***Written by: Joshua Bryant and Narrated by: Heather Thomas***Content Warning: Questionable mother-son relationship***Keep Calm and Smile***Written by: K. A. Tutin and Narrated by: Megan McDuffee***Content Warning: Dental gore***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Creepy presents. Basement Venus. Written by Joshua Bryant and narrated by Heather Thomas. They were finally lowering Joey's mother into the grave. A dry wind was coming up from the south with the scent of the desert in it. The canvas of the cover that kept the sun off the mourners, whipped and strained against the poles that fixed it to the ground. Grains of sand came up to get stuck in lipstick

and bring tears to otherwise dry eyes. I watched them begin flinging dirt on top of the coffin. Joey couldn't handle watching his mother get buried. So I was there on his behalf. I was trying to think of how best to describe it without gutting him. I wondered if I should call it beautiful. It wasn't. There was nothing beautiful about dirt being flung atop a pine box

with a dreadful old woman inside. I shouldn't think of her that way. She'd always taken care of Joey, and I appreciated that. And he loved her. I respected that. I walked away, satisfied that I had watched enough to fulfill any obligation I had. It was a hot day, even with the wind. I hardly noticed.

I was thinking about Joey and his mother. They always had a very close relationship. Close is a weak word to describe it. It went so far beyond close, it's disgusting to even attempt to use that word. She would cut his food up for him when we visited her. She would get upset if he called her anything except Mommy. She would sit in his lap and stroke his hair and sing to him. And of course, she despised me.

Close, indeed. I lit a cigarette and took a long drag. I looked over my shoulder. The few mourners that had been there were now dispersing, wandering back to their cars as aimlessly as they had wandered away from them. I didn't know any of these people. I had no idea if they had been the old woman's friends or extended family. Joey was her only son,

and probably the only person that held any meaning in her heart and mind. These thoughts made me somewhat sad for her. I hadn't hated her. I would rather say she perturbed me. It wasn't just her intimate relationship with Joey that made me feel that way. There at the end, when she had been laying in the hospital bed, her face was the only thing that reflected her sickness and age. Beneath the sheets and white gown, her body was robust,

and had seemed to be distending further, as if clinging to every calorie she ingested. It wasn't the body of a dying woman. Even after she died, only her face was ashen. The rest of her was taut beneath her bronze skin. I flicked the cigarette butt into the wind and left. When I got home, Joey was sitting on the porch swing. His face was dower and red from crying. He was a tender man.

the kind that looked to have never aged past sixteen in the face. It was only his wide hands and gangly limbs that provided the observer with any impression of manhood. He was an easy person to trust, an easy person to love. When I was walking up to him, I realized he was shuddering. I sighed and sat next to him, putting an arm over his shoulders.

I had expected him to lean against me as he ordinarily did, but he remained as if petrified. I'm so sorry, Joseph, I said, trying to pull him close. He didn't resist my pull, but I found him impossible to move. So I just kept my arm over him and waited. I knew he would speak eventually. When he did, it was in a tone that was soft, and the words came through a smile.

You know what her last words were? He asked, then continued. She told me not to worry. She said she would always be there to feed me. I narrowed my eyes a little. I didn't remember her saying anything of the sort, and I'd been there with Joey every second until she passed. I looked closely at Joey's vacant eyes and that slight smile.

I reasoned that he was experiencing some form of shock. I stroked his cheek. Suddenly he jerked his head about and stared straight at me. The smile was gone, and his eyes had lost their vacancy. For a brief moment, one that died as quickly as it had been born. He seemed to not recognize me, and this created such a look of intense horror on his face that I withdrew my arm from him and scooted away.

Then he tittered and patted my thigh. I laughed a little too, but it hardly masked my discomfort. Again, Joey was staring straight forward. His hand was still in my thigh, his banana long fingers squeezing until it was on the verge of being painful. I found myself wanting another cigarette.

Instead, I stood up and pried his hand loose. I watched it move back to his lap and rest on his knee. I'm going to make dinner, I said. Come in soon, please. He nodded. but I was quite sure he didn't really hear me. I turned and walked to the door, but as I was opening it, he stopped me.

He asked me what cemetery she was buried in. I looked down the street and wondered why I was reluctant to tell him. Parts of my brain told me that it would be good for him to know. He would be able to visit her grave and come to terms with her death. Yet there was another impression within that that was difficult to ignore. It was a nameless feeling that unsettled and unbalanced me. I was aware, strangely, that my heart was beating.

Joey repeated his question with more emphasis. I told him and hurried and sighed. A gust of wind erupted at my back and made it difficult to shut the door. I slammed it and pressed my forehead against the wood, confused at the anxiety that had abruptly stolen my composure. After several minutes, I walked to the kitchen and began fixing our food in silence. That night, when in the midst of a rest of slumber, the screaming of wind through an open window woke me. I sat up, my pulse quickening.

I looked beside me and found Joey asleep. He was on his stomach, face mostly buried in his goose-down pillow. Calming my breath, I slowly moved my legs out from under the sheets and walked. walked out of the bedroom. Following the sound of the wind, I made my way down the dark hallway and into the living room. The window overlooking the front yard was wide open, the maroon curtains fluttering about, like the wings of a struggling bird. I looked all around, peering long into the deep shadows that painted the house. I saw no one looking back at me. I walked to the window and shut and locked it. Nothing seemed to miss.

I turned on the lights and searched the rooms of the house. The door to the basement was locked as usual, so I didn't go down. I found nothing disturbing, though this didn't really comfort me. I went back to the bedroom, but halfway under the sheets I stopped. There was something different. There was a scent in the air that was unprecedented. It was subtle, yet nearly imperceptible. yet I knew it was there.

It was the smell of fresh-cut cantaloupe. I laid back, unsure of what to make of it. Beside me, Joey murmured in his sleep. He even smacked his lips. The next day I went to work, putting the strange night behind me. Joey was unemployed, so he stayed home. The day was rather mundane, and this helped my feelings of perturbation the most. There is nothing like a day back in a routine of mindlessness that degrades the bizarre.

But on the way back home, I couldn't escape a mounting dread. It dogged me, no matter how I turned the radio up, no matter how I tried to think of other things. It refused to depart. I pulled into my driveway and again Joey was sitting on the porch swing. I got out of my car and smiled at him. He wasn't even looking at me. As I drew closer, it dawned on me that he didn't look as he normally did. Like the scent from the previous night, it was a subtle change.

Not so much about the face, but more about his body. There seemed to have been a sort of increase in fullness. I sat next to him and looked down at his hands, and they too seemed a little less long, a little less peaked at the knuckles. A little less strong. I tried to smile again and kissed his cheek. I froze as my lips grazed his skin. The cantaloupe smell was on him, ever so slightly permeating from his soft, hairless face.

I drew back and saw that he was looking at me through the corners of his eyes. He welcomed me home while smiling. He did not blink. I thanked him and he looked away. We sat in silence for us. long time. Over the next week, these thin changes would grow in severity. Every morning I would get up and go to work, aware that the cantaloupe scent had now become a cantaloupe stink that was clinging to everything in the house like fly tape. Every evening, I would come back to find Joey seated on the

porch swing. His shirts tighter across a bulging stomach, jowls drooping low over his collar, and his once masculine hands, now diminutive and infantile. I would look suspiciously into the fridge and find food untouched. He wasn't eating any more than he regularly did. I searched high and low for anything that could be giving off the smell. I found nothing. I asked Joey if he knew why he was suddenly gaining so much weight, and he would just smile and shrug and watch his cartoons.

Even as my apprehension was growing, Joey seemed more and more at ease. I actually had not seen him so content in years. He was still tender and still kind-hearted, but something was different about him. He struck me as less mature, less receptive, and less present. Rapidly, I found him less and less lovable. I couldn't help but treat him differently. I was by no means cruel or even callous, but there was not a spark in my touch or a desire in my words any longer, and it stung that he didn't even notice.

Then came Saturday, my day off. I woke up late, drowsy and only concerned with a cup of coffee. I noticed that Joey was not in bed, but this wasn't abnormal. He generally liked to get up before I did. I walked down the hall, putting a hand. over my nose in a failing attempt to filter the cantaloupe stink out. I turned into the kitchen just in time to see Joey shutting the basement door. Quickly he locked it, put the key into his pocket, and turned around to look at me.

The florid-faced guilt he bore was disturbingly childlike. He leaned back against the basement door, folded his arms, and looked down. He was tittering again. Something about it made my mind. skin squirm. What were you doing in the basement? I asked, trying not to sound too concerned. He pursed his lips, lifted his eyebrows, and shook his head.

Then he giggled. I bit the inside of my cheek and studied him for a moment. He began prodding a dust bunny on the floor with the toe of his bright red sneakers. Indignation crept up my spine. I let out a heavy breath. Look, Joseph, I don't know why you're acting this way, but you're a grown man. Okay? This isn't cute?

And I'm not your mommy, I said as I stomped over to the coffee pot. I was uncomfortably aware that his breathing had intensified, and I could feel his eyes on the back of my head. Sweat beat it under my arms and on my brow. I jumped a little when I heard him run out of the body of the head. the kitchen and into the living room. He threw the front door open and slammed it shut behind him. I heard his thudding steps as he ran up the street. I put the coffee filter and spoon of grounds down on the counter. I was shaking and couldn't stop. I was so confused. I had been with him for years. He was always quite childish and formerly I thought this to be rather endearing.

Now it seemed as if he were degenerating before my eyes. I sighed and remembered the basement. I turned around and looked at the door. It was thin, unremarkable in every way. Yet it transfixed me. It was like a closed mouth that was merely withholding a life-altering secret by means of staying shut.

If one were to pry those lips open, everything would just come spilling out. I walked over to it, my slippers swishing on the tile. I looked over my shoulders and tried the knob. Of course it was locked. I rammed my shoulder against it and felt the wood yield a little. Embarrassed I took a step back, laughed a little, and rubbed my arm. I felt foolish for a moment, wondering at why my curiosity was compelling me to such dramatic lengths all of.

a sudden. I was in the middle of turning around when a waft of extremely pungent cantaloupe stink came from the crack at the bottom of the door. It was accompanied by a subdued gasping that I had to strain my ears to hear. Then all fell quiet. Like an idiot, I tried the doorknob again. Obviously, it was still locked. I checked my surroundings once more, listened for Joey, and when I was satisfied that I remained alone, I slammed my shoulder into the door a second time. It cracked down the middle, and an even greater rush of the cloying fragrance seeped out. It was enough to make me gag. Putting one hand over my mouth, I struck the door again, and it broke so cleanly, I almost fell through.

regaining my balance I stared deep into the darkness below. A low monotonous dread had consumed me to the point where I did not want to move. I waited, expecting something to move in the opaque shadows of the basement. But nothing did. I reached past the ruined door and found the light switch. I flicked it in an egg-yoke yellow light chased the darkness away. The old wooden stairs went down at a harsh angle that ended at the uneven level. floor. I could see in the gray dust many footprints that had to belong to Joey.

Beyond the stairs and the floor, I couldn't see any further without actually going into the basement. I stepped carefully over the busted door and tiptoed down the steps. The candelope smell was so thick I could practically feel it sticking to my skin, clumping in my hair like rotten syrup. But this only marginally held my attention. I was staring forward with unblinking eyes, my apprehension transforming into blatant fear. I reached the bottom of the stairs and saw something at the far end of the basement that obliterated thoughts from my mind for a moment. Comprehension came slowly and not just to my mind. My fingers moved to my cheeks. The air seeped, from my body. I swayed and bent my knees. The tiniest cry escaped my drawn lips. A body was suspended

from the rafters of the basement by five ropes. Two ropes held the knees so the legs spread wide, revealing a thick white triangle of hair. Two more ropes held the elbows, pulling the arms back so as to thrust the pendulumous breasts forward. And the fifth rope was tied about the neck of the body, pulling the spine tight so the corpse seemed to be sitting in the air. The skin had sloft, revealing a grinning skull with long strands of hair sprouting from a papery scalp. The huge swollen breasts with their blood-red nipples were leaking milk that coursed over the distended stomach and dribbled onto the floor. Right before I screamed, I realized who it was I was looking at. Then I was running up the stairs, my hysterical mind thoughtless, my body utterly consumed with terror.

But my flight was interrupted when someone appeared in the doorway. It was Joey. I was stammering, trying to tell him what I had seen. But I stopped when I saw the look on his face. He didn't look like a child, nor a man, but something crude and monstrous between the too. And there was nothing in his once-innocent eyes that reflected care. With a boyish shriek, he threw himself at me. We rolled down the stairs together, crashing over the splintering wood before striking the stone floor in a heap. I groaned, and an electrifying pain was shooting of my back and into my neck. Joey was laying atop me, motionless. Blood was strutelying. Blood was

streaming from a huge gash on the back of his head. I couldn't feel my legs, stunned and in agony I laid there. The world around me felt far away. It hurt to breathe. Thoughts were torpid. Words could find no form on my tongue. A cold draught caressed my cheek. The rotted cantaloupe smell enveloped me.

I heard a distant sigh like a breath coming from a bottom of a well. I looked towards the back of the basement. I looked at Joey's hanging mother. I looked at the bronze skin that was still pliant and soft. I looked at the open legs and the dangling feet. I looked at the faceless skull. And I looked at the arms that were now stretched out, the hands gently beckoning, fingers curling and uncurling over and over.

But I knew this revolting thing was not calling me. It was calling Joey. I looked back at the basement door now, so far away. It was a rectangle of white light at the end of a shattered stairs. I reached out for it, but nothing reached for me. Creepy Presents Keep Calm and Smile, written by K.A. Tutton and narrated by Megan McDuffie. The woman on the TV advert has a naturally white teeth, like she has swallowed a whole tin of house paint.

She holds the toothpaste between her slender fingers, an image printed on the front that looks like the same woman but not quite. And you find that strange. But as long as the step works, which pushes you to log onto the website and place an order. Impatience crawls under your skin for some reason, an itch without the rash, refreshing the tracking. page over the three to five working days. Maybe because nothing else has fixed your stripped enamel and unbearable sensitivity. Maybe because you want to be able to smile without bring your mouth. Maybe because people tell you smiling makes you feel better. Maybe because this is the most encouraging way to achieve feeling something else than what you have felt since you have no idea.

The courier tosses the package onto your doorstep, and a neighbor sticks their nose over the fence and asks what you've been buying. When you tell them, their brow crinkles, and they say they've never seen the advertisement you describe, nor the product on any shelves. But you don't care, hurrying inside and taking the stairs two steps at a time to test and taste, even though it's only midday. The ingredients list spearmint as the flavoring, but it could be peppermint. You've never been able to tell the difference. You scrub your teeth with a pressure that's probably counterproductive for two minutes, and then another two, and then your tongue for good measure, until you think a metallic taste could be blood. But the same people who told you to smile won't notice how white your teeth are when you next see them.

Not at home, at work, at the pub. In a crowded aisle at the supermarket. Not even a passing comment that you would lap up like a parched dog drinking from somewhere. muddy and insect-infested puddle, and you would have any nice nashers you got there, or one look from you and you're going to cause a pile up on the road, or you have way too much going on there, or there's something different about you. What is it? You can tell me. You think it must be because you keep your lips sealed shut for none to see, because you are insecure about that crooked tooth overlapping the other,

because why would they stop and consider and notice when there's nothing there to stop and consider and notice? So when you see the woman on the TV, a block plastic sealed over her teeth, advertising the clear retainer that promises to make anyone smile straight enough to rest a spirit level on, a twinge spasms through your finger from how fast you click add to basket, feelings sinks into you like relief like control like something else than the sensation that feels you are untethered from the ground and drifting away

like whatever the woman is supposed to be expressing with her eyes a little dead and unsettling but the grin stretching wide across her pallid cheeks the retainer looks more like the old kind made with wires than you get in touch with the company via live chat who responds with an automated script about how all products are exactly as described, and you might have been annoyed had they not been dirt cheap. Unlike when the pediatric orthodontics presented your parent with three grand's worth of metal and rubber bands for your fucked-up jowls. You don't blame them for when they had apologized, barely able to scrape together the pennies for the store-brand ice cream they got you instead. You don't blame them because you can barely afford the ice cream nowadays, buying the toothpaste and the retainer with the savings meant for emergency. but this feels like an emergency. It feels like an emergency because there's a screeching in your head that suspiciously sounds like sirens.

When you wear the retainer, which is when you go to sleep, you want the people to see but not see. The wire presses into your cheek and gums until you taste that stainless tang on your tongue again. You drown it out with long switches of mouthwash and coffee and alcohol and anything else that makes your throat burn. In the mornings, your mouth is shredded, and you struggle to yank the thing out because you think your teeth might come out with it. Notice the difference immediately.

That crooked tooth, impossibly straight. And the others, too, none of which you realized were uneven to begin with. And you think, right, the people have got to notice now, haven't they? Come the next day on a cold Monday evening, one of your oldest friends facetimes you as your reheating leftover pasta you don't have any hunger for or for anything at all and they stop and study you they don't say anything but the way their gaze lingers on your mouth tells you they see something that they haven't before but then they thin

their lips in a flat smile and rattle on about a new film they think you would like and the microwave dings and your lack of appetite intensifies into nausea and once you end up the call, you throw the lumpy mess into the bin. You try to distract yourself downloading several video games and audiobooks, but you don't get past the first chapter for either as your attention strays to those people, the people with their perfect teeth, smiling and laughing as though taunting you with an intentional display of what you do not have. Your smile still is not Enough. Still not like theirs. And you need one, a smile that would allow you to experience some semblance of the ones you keep seeing. So, when the woman, whose eyes are blackened out and

smile lopsided presumably because of some satellite interference or delay, on the TV, advertises dentures that promises a symmetry that not even a mirror could correct. A sharp pain whips up your spine from how quickly you jump in front of your computer. Familiarity washes over you like a hot shower without the cold exit. Even when you read the terms and conditions, where a clause refuses liability should you install them incorrectly, and refuses refunds should you damage them. The contents of the package are unexpected this time, filled with several tools and an instruction manual, dental gag to hold your mouth open and scalpel and pliable. to extract each two extra-absorbent packing gauze.

You are no expert, of course. The illustration seemed simple enough, and the reviews raved about how easy the procedure was, pictures of their smiles attached, zoomed in, indistinguishable from each other. You slip the needle beneath your gums and try not to cringe at the numbness that spreads over them, hunching over the sink with the open manual,

balanced on one side and all the tools laid out on the other. Blood floods your mouth with the first cut of the scalpel blade, and you let the warm liquid drip into the basin, pinking the running water. You grunt at the pressure as you set the pliers around a molar, and then the next, the steady clunk, clunk, plunk, every time hitting the porcelain, echoing around the bathroom. You have never been averse to the sight of blood,

nor the smell or touch or taste, but you still feel woozy, steadying yourself against the sink so hard that your hands turn white around the edges, same as the spots swimming across your vision. The instructions say to wait for the wounds to heal before putting in the dentures, which you had planned for by calling in sick to work for the next three weeks.

Your manager never asked what for, but sighed over the phone about how poor your timing was, how you would have to make up for the backlog of work, work once you return, but you reassure them you would be fine by then. You don't know what to do with your old teeth, picking them up one by one and rolling them between your fingers, sharper than expected, so you wrap them within some tissue like parents would do with their children's milk teeth. Only instead of a dainty trinket box, you step them at the back of the medicine cabinet. On the Thursday, when your sibling comes around for their weekly visit, they pause on the doorstep.

They tilt their head, and they stare, and they say, there's something different about you. What is it? You can tell me. And shit, you almost tell them, because this is what you wanted, wasn't it? But then you wonder the reason for why they ask. Do they want to know so they can whisper the answer into the ears of their relatives? Do they want to know so they can decide whether to follow through on the subject they approached? Do they want to know because then?

Then at least they can say they asked about your teeth. Do they want to know? Because, sure, they want to know about your teeth, but they don't want to know. Not the what or the how or the why. Why? Because smiling is supposed to make you happy. Why? Because smiling is one of the first things people see and remember.

Why? Because smiling is what's expected of you. You pause and pause. Pause and pause, and then you tell them, oh, nothing, same old me. They don't ask you again, and you have a cup of tea and chat, and then they leave. And although your stomach drops at the side of their car pulling out of the driveway and disappearing down the road, the sigh released from deep within your lungs seems like relief. At least you think it must be relief, because before you were sweating and your heart was racing

and you felt like you were suffocating. So when the woman, who doesn't look like a woman anymore, or a human at all from the hollow eye sockets and distorted face and the two clean slashes from cheeks' ears on the TV advertises the stitching kit that promises to make your smile permanent, your chest hurts with the breath that stutters out of you, stuttering like finger hesitates over the mouse, your hands when you pick up the package,

from your doorstep the following morning. Except when you venture into the bathroom this time, the mood shifts. Be hesitant. You find yourself running the shower for the white noise and the steam for a relaxant, warming your skin with a sticky heat. Your hand squeaks across the mirror

as you swipe a clear streak, a gash that reflects your tired face, teeth too big for your lips to close. fully, so white that they glare against the LED lighting. You unbox the stitching kit. The first slice stings, even with the local anesthesia. But you put that down to the adrenaline pounding through your bloodstream, making you dizzy like your head is full of flies. You become numb to the sensation with the next few cuts, cutting and bleeding and struggling to thread the needle with the wetness soaking your fingers.

But you man it, and you bring the sharp point to your face, and you pull the skin top, and you curl under tissue, and you loop, and you pull. You knock the bread and snip the ends, but you do not look in the mirror again until you have cleaned the mess away, scrubbed the sink clean with bleach, and thrown away the bloodied gauze,

cracking open the window to disperse the coppery scent and the sweltering fog. You expect yourself, gasp, when you eventually look at yourself, but you do not react at all. The black stitches are stark against your pale and sweaty complexion, cheeks crimson with dried blood and inflamed tissue and mangled flesh. Yet you do not feel indifferent. You do not feel happy like the people said you would,

but you do not feel what you had been feeling before. Feel nothing. But you tell yourself you will. You will feel different. Feel the happiness. Feel something or anything or please anything at all. The smile is there. A smile finally there.

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